Mad Men Season 5 - Page 18

Meh I was let down by the "finale". It would have worked better as the first episode of Season 6 to me.

 

I agree with much of Maureen Ryan's review. WAY too much "on the Nose with a hammer" stuff....Don's Rotten Soul Tooth, Dead Brother Adam popping up to make with the Yucks about hanging himself (JUST LIKE LANE LAST EPISODE HOLY SHIT!!!!), even the bout of Pete Punching was too much (and obvious Fan service).

 

And Pete's lover getting Electro Shock therapy had me rolling my eyes.

 

Poor Joan now has no respect in the firm, even as a sex object (reference to Joan's conversation with Don where she says she wished she'd given Lane what he wanted. And Don's like' What was that?").

 

The lack of any mention of Race is a serious dropped ball. Sure the Ad men wouldn't care, but they would have to pay attention by that point, plus the first couple of episodes put racial tensions in the foreground. Weiner is very disingenuous saying anyone who questions the lack of race related plot points is racist: HE brought the issue up in episode after episode through the entire series!

 

So we've hit the re-set button with Don: He's BACK ON THE PROWL!

 

The one thing I liked: the use of You Only Live Twice.

Edited by Cylon Baby - 6/11/12 at 7:26pm

 

What the what?  Where did you get that from?

I'm pretty sure Don's face was meant to show his shock that Lane was into Joan.  The only problem is, I think Joan was overselling Lane's interest in her as something beyond spontaneously sexual. It was weird hearing Joan talk like that, and interpret Lane's suicide as something that was caused by her rejection. 

 

I guess not knowing the truth would cause anyone to wonder, considering how guarded Lane was. It was just strange to see Joan jump to that conclusion.

I think Joan is becoming the new Peggy... before long she'll be running that place.

 

The music at the end reminded my of what I always think of as the "Kennedy Archetype", which is this way that Connery's Bond, Adam West's Batman, Captain Kirk, and Jack Lord kind of took the look and attitude of JFK and just ran with it, giving the world a kind of "what if" of if Kennedy had lived, fighting organized crime, destroying communism, exploring space and getting laid AND paid.  The Mysterious Donald Draper really does fit the Kennedy mold (Get it everybody?  The music, the suit, the girls ... he actually still IS hip), and there's really no place for his wife or girlfriend to go but the sidekick/Dr. Girlfriend route.  Megan made a choice not to be like Faye or Peggy, which is what Don really wants ... but that's marriage and shit.  I feel the dynamic between Don, Megan, and Betty this season has explored the social history of American in a very satisfying, personal, and thematically honest way.

 

As for people who want Mad Men to address race relations in a more head-on way, you'll find a very complex, exciting narrative of Civil Rights in the 60s watching Spike Lee's "Malcolm X".   If you think that Mad Men is going to explore the same themes and events, you might not really get the show.

They had a kind of bond, forged by being the two people who managed the finances, and probably saw things more practically than others at the firm. I don't know that she honestly believed she could have saved him, but when you're feeling bad over something like that you naturally wonder what you could have done. Who knows if there is some lingering feelings of guilt that she slept with a man and got a partnership, and then rejected a man who killed himself. Especially since Lane suggested she be made partner (she obviously isn't aware he was trying to cover his own ass with that suggestion.)

She already does.

 

 

But they have 'splosions and/or laugh tracks. 

Sorry for my typo. I meant "Joan says 'if I'd given him (LANE) what he wanted' and Don's like "oh what was that?"

I actually meant the idea the Joan gets no respect.  Or isn't viewed as a sexual object anymore.  I didn't see that anywhere in the episode.

 

I was simplifying to avoid writing an essay. 

 

Didn't Don dump Fay almost immediately after realizing she had no interest in or rapport with children?

 

Don was truly happy when Megan was kicking ass at advertising and calling him on his shit at home. He didn't grow tired of Megan; Megan wanted more. Even dumping her advertising career didn't make Don stray, it was only her sulking helplessness that did that.

 

Megan ended up in stark contrast to Don's closest female relationship: Peggy. Don helped Peggy get her start, but she also earned everything she got on merit. She demanded his respect, and left when he stopped giving it to her. Megan traded his respect for a commercial.

I could be reading more into that one line than was intended.....except that all the Partners were privy to Joan's dalliance with the Car prick, and Lanes' last conversation with Joan was less than respectful. (and perhaps not even sexual, as Lane was basically saying she was a cock tease, to him at least).

 

I understand that's how Don sees it, but that's not reality.

 

Don dumped a smart, mature woman because she didn't want to raise his kids for him. (IIRC, Faye honestly said she wasn't good with kids.  She never expected Don to choose her over them. And Don is not exactly heavily involved in his kid's lives in the first place.)  And now he's straying on another woman who has been great for him because she's not perfect either.  Has Megan been immature about this commercial thing?  Yes.  Could it be the tip of the iceberg?  Sure.  But it's hardly an established pattern.  Don is using the first excuse to jump ship.  Megan has been petulant about it, but only very recently.  Even if acting is a pipe dream for her, she has been working hard at it, and only just started to show impatience and weakness.  This is the first shortcut she's tried to take, and Don loses all respect for her?   That puts the onus on him, as far as I'm concerned.

 

We've seen it time and time again on this show.  Don as emotional vampire.  Taking what he wants from women until some issue comes up, and instead of working to maintain the relationship, he seeks what he needs in someone else.

Liked the costing vibe of the finale, but we're not exactly sure how Don is going to act. I would of preferred his tooth issue to be caused by his smoking. The additional stress of being forced to quit, or go down the destructive path of continuing to do what he does might of fit in really well.

If the theme is on growth this season, and how it affected the characters, then I do like Don continuing to mature down his more noble path.

Am I the only one who thought Don was going to get a hand job from Peggy?

 

Other way around.

The vibe of the finale was a bit too easy for my tastes (and I usually love these finales), but there's no denying that they nailed Pete's final scene with Beth. Every time I start to hate the fucker they find a way to humanize him. Still the most fascinating character in the show for me.

 

Peggy was the one who thought Sairus would get a handjob from Don?

Anyone else disappointed that Don Draper hadn't become The Ghost Who Walks?

 

(No, I am not going to apply additional thematic meaning to that dumb joke.)

Well it might be evil slams him.

The Phantom MadMenace?

 

I might be misremembering, but wasn't the episode where Don essentially dumped Faye for Megan the one where Sally has a meltdown in the office, Faye was useless, and Megan comforted her?

 

Don already married one woman who was shitty with kids. I can't see wanting a decent mother for his kids as a personality defect - those kids deserve at least ONE. 

 

Megan also dropped a successful career to pursue a childhood dream, essentially turning herself from a near-equal into someone whose whims Don must indulge. I believe there's supposed to have been a fairly significant amount of time between her sudden quitting and the commercial.

 

There's nothing terrible about what she's doing, it's just the reason why younger people usually shouldn't get married: they're in flux. Don has actually handled all of it quite well IMO... until that final scene.

 

 

"Look, I keep telling you guys, no more hand jobs; it was a one-time thing! I was stoned, and... Oh, Don!"

"Peggy?"

"PIZZA HOUSE!"

(Peggy runs for the door)

Yes, Faye was all but useless when Sally was acting out.  But the show was hardly making the point that that was some kind of deal breaker.  Not everyone is good with kids.  There was no real indication she was unwilling to try, but she wasn't going to (and couldn't, for that matter) solve Don's child problems for him.  Don was trying to pawn Sally off on her while he attended to other matters.  She wasn't having it.

 

Megan's facility with the kids was certainly part of what sealed the deal in her favor.

 

IMO, Don hasn't really had to handle a whole lot with regard to Megan's acting.  Certainly not enough that one episode of petulance should have erased the love and respect he ostensibly had for her.  Especially when it appears the first instinct he has is to fuck around, which pretty much destroys the whole marriage a hell of a lot faster than a wife who's unsure what she wants to do with her life.

Weiner recently made a comment that we should expect Don to be married to Megan for the rest of his life, calling it the "good marriage" that comes after the "bad marriage."

 

Still, it's clear that the honeymoon is over.

Actually Don's a closet Objectivist and is pissed that Megan has become a Moocher; thus he leaves to find his own Dagney Taggart.

I know everyone takes that final shot to be a tacit confirmation that he's back to his old ways, but I'm far from a hundred percent on that. "Are you alone?" has a bunch of implications, beyond Don's fidelity, and while it's certainly a suggestive moment, especially framed in such a way, I could imagine it being a grace note/Mad Men version of a cliffhanger than a guarantee.

 

 

I agree completely. The suspense is in what he'll say next.

I thought it was more just obvious symbolism.  I don't think it matters whether he bangs the girl at the bar, just that he realizes he'll never be happy with someone.

 

Goes back to Faye telling / warning Don that he'll be married in a year because he's the "type".  Really, Don did't need to get married, but maybe it was important to him that his kids didn't see him with a live-in girlfriend.  Now he's in the same rut that he was in with his first wife, but I think Don's matured to the point that he'll stick it out.  1967 was Connery's last adventure as the dick-swinging 007 before the producers decided that the new Bond should meet his dream girl and get married ... that didn't work out either I guess, although the idea of Lazenby and Rigg kicking ass all through the 70s as a happy married couple sounds a lot better than what we got.

 

For better or worse, I think that Don's settled in with Megan - no cheating, no LSD, no key parties or hippy shit.  Where Don really has room to grow is as a business man. I had thought that SCDP had hit the wall when Ed Baxter told off Don at the American Cancer Society meeting ... the scene reminded me of the time in "The Sopranos" where AJ is watching "The Godfather" with some high school friends who ask AJ why his dad, the mafia king of New Jersey, isn't a billionaire.  I had thought that Don, like Tony Soprano, had reached as far as he was going to go in business ... with Don's mind off puss-puss, it will be interesting to watch him smash his way to the top of the business world and make fuck-you money by the end of the 60s.

Edited by WendellEverett - 6/13/12 at 6:53pm

 

But...but..what we got was....MOONRAKER!

The final line may have been more about whether Don "feels" alone, than whether he is about (or is even tempted to) go back to his philandering ways.

 

Don's been insecure about losing Megan since the beginning of the season.  At first he imagined that his adulterous "Dark Passenger" might rear its ugly head, "forcing" him to destroy the relationship.  That's him being a typical 60's guy, tacitly believing he has all the power, and the relationship will rise or fall based on what HE does. 

 

As the season progresses, though, he grows more insecure about Megan; he begins to see that she has a mind of her own, that he can't control her, and that she may choose to leave him eventually, regardless of how well he behaves or what he does (or doesn't do) to try and make her happy.  He's realized that he's powerless, and that terrifies him.  He's already had one wife leave him; but he can rationalize that away, say "Well, I fucked up.  I won't fuck up again."  He's just beginning to realize it's not that simple. 

Presented without comment.

 

God, the number of graphs that must have taken.

I was rewatching Season 2 a few weeks ago, specifically episode 10 where Roger proposes to Jane. They're lying on a bed, he's reading a poem she wrote and I'm paraphrasing here, but she says "I write a lot of poetry when I'm inspired..." and later on in the scene, she says, "How do I know I just won't eat another mushroom and this room will disappear and I'll be on a train to Trenton." What I'm trying to say is that Roger and Jane were both tripping on shrooms at the beginning of their marriage, which definitively bookends their eventual breakup on LSD this season.  They also both look extremely high that scene.  I completely overlooked this scene when I first watched it, but it really shows how progressive / spiritual / druggie Roger becomes and sets up his Acid trips hes doing in this season a lot earlier than I expected. 

Hmm. Thought it was an Alice in Wonderland reference, personallly.

I've never read/seen Alice in Wonderland, what would the reference be?

 

This is the first and last time I'll ever say such a thing but if this went through autotune it would be so much better.

 

 

Just re-watched S4 & S5 and I stand  by my statement above. Poor Joan is no longer the "office Babe everyone wants". As seen in her getting humiliated by "Handsome Gay Panic Copy Writer". None of the other Copy Writers (except Peggy, and Joan slams the door on that relationship fast) respect her either. And as mentioned above, there's Don's question to Joan. I think the Partners have to view Joan in a negative light after that business with the Car Dealership guy. You see it in the Finale when she's trying to discuss business and everyone dismisses her to one degree or another.

 

One thing I missed; in S5 Don has lost his ability to write Copy so he steals ideas from one of the Copy Writers (blanking on the guy's name, not Ginsburg, the tall guy) for the Devil Snowball campaign. And the Copy Writer realizes it as Don presents it. So one thing he's getting from Megan is his own ability, but then she leaves. (and is she really pursuing her dream, or is it her Fathers?). By the end of the Season Don has no resources of his own but needs the people around him. But he's steadily alienating those people (see his slamming Ginsburg, stealing copy from the Copy Writer, most of his interactions with Harry and Pete etc).